Revamping Skopje

Stones of contention

Macedonia writes a new story for its capital

IN 2010 a computer-generated video of plans for the Macedonian capital was released to journalists. There were to be statues and monuments, new museums and civic buildings, a triumphal arch, even an eternal flame. After decades in hibernation Skopje’s turbocharged planners seemed determined that the city should make up for lost time. While Nikola Gruevski, the prime minister, was in office they planned to erect as much public art as some European capitals have put up in three centuries. Many assumed it was some sort of joke.

Three years later, the project is nearing completion and this corner of the Balkans is suffering the shock of the new. For this is more than just a city rejuvenation project. Almost every structure and statue is part of a wider ideological scheme to recast Macedonia’s identity. The heart is Skopje’s central square, which for decades was a bleak and empty space. Now it has been crammed with statuary. There are 19th-century Macedonian heroes, the medieval Tsar Samuel (whom the Bulgarians angrily claim as their own) and Justinian, a Byzantine emperor who was born near Skopje. Nearby are two saints, Cyril and Methodius, the fathers of the Cyrillic alphabet. Centre-stage goes to a giant bronze Alexander the Great. He is encircled by warriors, who in turn are surrounded by a fountain, with music, roaring lions and lights that change colour.

Ever since Macedonia became independent in 1991 Greece has fought a bitter diplomatic war with its northern neighbour. The new state, created from a former Yugoslav republic, it argued, was a thinly veiled territorial claim on its own northern region of Macedonia. Worse the Slav Macedonians, said the Greeks, were trying to steal their Hellenic history and culture.

Until Greece blocked Macedonia’s accession to NATO in 2008, the government in Skopje never really took the history bait from Greece. Since then, however, the nationalist ideologues have become louder. Far from the Macedonians being an invented nation, as the Greeks argue, Vangel Bozinovski, one of the architects working on Skopje’s revamp says that it is in fact the Greek nation that was invented in the 19th century, and hence it is they who are stealing Macedonian history, including that of Alexander the Great. Just to make the point, a statue of Alexander’s father, Philip of Macedon, has been erected and several of his mother, Olympia. A neoclassical archaeological museum (pictured) is nearing completion and a new foreign ministry with a classical temple-style portico has just been completed.

Neoclassicism is not the only style being reused. Mr Bozinovski, who has built a “memorial house” to honour Mother Teresa, the Skopje-born nun who found fame caring for the dying in Kolkata, speaks of “eclecticism”. He is working on a plan for redeveloping a building which he says “is going to be real baroque”. In 1689 the then Ottoman city was torched by the Austrians. Mr Bozinovski claims that by building baroque he is only restoring this style to its rightful place; before the fire, he says, Skopje was as baroque as Prague.

But the city also wants to reclaim its more recent past. Close to the parliament building, on top of which new glass cupolas are now sprouting, is a war memorial for Macedonians killed fighting guerrillas from the country’s Albanian minority in 2001. Albanians make up at least a quarter of the population and many loathe what has been done to the capital. “I hate it,” says Lura Pollozhani, a young Macedonian-Albanian journalist. “I don’t see me here.” By concentrating on ancient Macedonian themes, she believes, Albanians are being told: “We were on this land first.”

But Albanians have political clout in Macedonia and a new square in the predominantly Albanian part of the city is also being built. A statue of Skanderbeg, their medieval hero was already here, and more monuments will follow. A 30-metre statue of Mother Teresa, an Albanian, is planned for the city’s main square. The reconstruction of a church destroyed in 1963 was stopped as part of a vicious quarrel in which Albanians, for their part, demanded the reconstruction of a mosque.

Macedonians have mixed feelings about the government’s cultural aggrandisement. Something needed to be done, they say, and something has been done, even if sometimes it is over the top. But Macedonian liberals and the opposition feel aggrieved. Questions are being asked in parliament about how much the projects are costing. Saso Ordanoski, a veteran commentator, is especially critical. “It is a catastrophe. It is a Disneyland. They consider Macedonia to be the ancient cradle of civilisation and not a normal, small, modern European country. That would be below their standards.”